Young, High Income Consumers Lead the Smartwatch Revolution

Smartwatch Adoption Set for Strong Growth Next Year as Apple Watch Launches into Wearables

San Francisco, CA, April 16, 2015: The Apple Watch release could be the shot that sets smartwatch adoption off to the races. The opportunity is great: wearables owners today are gold-standard customers: high income, younger, and extremely engaged in digital banking, payments, and shopping. Smartwatches are unique devices, designed for lightning-fast and personalized interactions. Today, Javelin Strategy & Research released What Apple Watch Means for Banking and Payments, which analyzes the first banking and payments wearable apps, interprets Apple’s developer guidelines from a financial solution lens, and identifies the key features wearables owners crave.

Wearables are in the early stages of adoption, but that may start to change with Apple entering the ring. Today, 6% of all consumers own a smartwatch and 12% have a health-monitoring band. This level of device adoption is comparable to that of smartphones and tablets when Apple released the first-generation iPhone and iPad. Moderate percentage point gains in consumer smartwatch adoption can be expected over the next year if the Apple Watch follows historical patterns. Javelin estimates Apple will ship 15 million Apple Watch devices its first year on the market.

“For Apple, the real test comes in the second year, when the 'fast followers' come on board. At that point, smartwatches are expected to net annual double-digit gains in overall consumer adoption,” said Mary Monahan, Research Director – Mobile at Javelin. “All of this means that until 2016, consumer adoption will not likely be large for smartwatches even under optimistic models, but the desirable first adopter segment promises to be younger, wealthier and tech savvy.”